India To Work Out Ways To Phase Out Wto Curbs: Fm

India yesterday said it will work out a programme in the next two months to phase out quantitative restrictions that would satisfy its trading partners and also will be acceptable domestically.

In the next 60 days we will work out a programme for phasing out QRs that will satisfy our trading partners in the World Trading Organisation (WTO) and also will be acceptable domestically, finance minister P Chidambaram said in his statement at the post-ministerial conference of Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean).

Chidambaram, leading a high-level delegation, pledged that India would meet the criteria of compatibility with Asian members in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum and would meet the Apecs deadline of market liberalisation between 2010 and 2020.

The finance minister lamented that despite talks of multilateralism and open regionalism, restrictive business practices and preferential treatment in trade blocs all over the world still existed.

We find ourselves targeted by patently discriminatory and unjustified protectionist measures including the misuse of instruments like anti-dumping actions or technical barriers to trade, he said. Chidambaram said, We find linkages being sought to be established between our access to markets and our performance in areas like human rights and elimination of child labour concerns which are of paramount importance to us as well.

He said globalisation understood only in terms of trade in goods, services, technology and finance was a narrow concept as it should encompass the cross-border flow of human resources as well.

Chidambaram is the only finance minister in the group of foreign ministers and US secretary of state Madeleine Albright who are attending the two-day annual conference between Asean and its 10 dialogue partners.

The finance minister called on the developed countries to exercise greater understanding of local constraints and realities in the lesser developed world.

Realities are immutable, they do change. But they take time, particularly in a pluralistic, multi-ethnic and open democracy, Chidambaram said.

Stressing that post-ministerial conference was an ideal forum for discussing multilateral economic issues, Chidambaram said such dialogues would facilitate a more balanced evolution of World Trading Organisation and the international trading system.